Miss Pepperill was not going to die. Dr. Forsyth made that good prophecy soon after Mrs. Eland had taken on herself the nursing of her strangely met sister.
The school teacher—so grim and secretive by nature—had been in a fever of worry and uncertainty long before the accident that had stretched her on this bed of illness. The relief her mind secured when her sister, Marion, and she were reunited did much to aid her recovery.
Nobody would have suspected that the calm, demure, little gray woman and the assertive, sharp-tongued school teacher were sisters; but the evidence of their own childish remembrances was conclusive. And that little Mrs. Eland should be the older of the two was likewise astounding.
There was still a sad secret on Mrs. Eland's heart. Mr. and Mrs. Buckham knew it. The smallest Corner House girl had prodded the doubt of her father's honesty to the surface of the hospital matron's mind.
"There ain't no fool like an old fool, it's my bounden duty to say," Mr. Bob Buckham remarked on the Monday of Christmas week, as he warmed his hands before the open fire on the hearth of the old Corner House sitting room.
He had come to town ostensibly to bring the Corner House girls' Christmas goose—a noble bird which Ruth had picked out of his flock herself on a recent visit to Strawberry Farm. But he confessed to another errand in Milton.
"I'd no business to talk out like I done about Abe and Lem Aden that first day you children was at our house. But I've allus hugged that injury to my breast. Marm says I ain't no business to, and I know she's right. But it hurt me dreadfully when I was a boy to lose my marm.
"The rascality lay between old Lem and Abe. Course we couldn't never prove anything on Lem, and he never had a good word himself for his brother. I read his letters to Abe—Mrs. Eland, she showed 'em to me—and there wasn't a word in 'em about my father's five hundred."
"Oh, dear me!" Ruth replied, "I wish it could be cleared up for the sake of Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill. You don't care about the money now, Mr. Buckham."
"No. Thank the good Lord, I don't. And as I say, I blame myself for ever mentioning it before you gals."